McGavick endorses oil drilling in Puget Sound

Well… not exactly. But he has apparently teamed up with Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has proposed sending a fleet of single-hulled tankers into Puget Sound in retaliation for Sen. Maria Cantwell leading the fight to stop drilling in ANWR.

Beltway mites say Elliott Bundy, who worked in Alaska for Lisa in her U.S. Senate race and took a job in her office, has resigned. He’s headed to Seattle to work on Mike McGavick’s campaign to wrest U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s seat away from her in November. Maria is the Washington senator who made Ted Stevens’ head explode during the ANWR debate, the one he swore to drive out of office by going to her state and campaigning against her.

So here’s Ear’s only question: Is Ted paying Elliott’s salary?

The arrival of Bundy — a former Stevens aide — apparently signals the kickoff of the Stevens/McGavick campaign… a team I just don’t believe WA voters will find all that attractive come November. Democratic Party spokesman Christian Sinderman sums it up well:

“We don’t know much about Mike McGavick’s positions on most critical issues, but we do know that he wants to drill in the Arctic. Perhaps Stevens himself will join McGavick later this year and make the case for oil supertankers in the Puget Sound as well.”

I hope the dickhead crybaby from Alaska comes to Washington to campaign for McGavick. Regardless of McGavick’s positions – do we really need another Republican in the Senate? McGavick might be a great guy with moderate positions, but this is not the right time to concentrate more power in the hands of the Republican party.

GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced today that lobbying reform and cleaning up the cesspool of corruption in Congress is now the GOP’s #1 legislative priority. After reviewing the details of Hastert’s reform plan, I’ve marked it up slightly. The revised version provides:

1. All Republicans in the House and Senate will resign. Those who don’t, will be impeached.

2. All Republicans in the House and Senate will go to jail.

3. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will resign. If they don’t, they will be impeached. Instead of going to jail, they will be turned over to The Hague.

4. The presidential pardon power is immediately suspended until further notice.

5. All Diebold voting machines will be removed from service and recycled into tunafish cans.

I am thrilled to hear that Senator Stevens wants to make sure that Senator Cantwell retains her Senate seat-this move by the GOP and Stevens will probably add another five to seven points to Senator Cantwell’s margin of victory.

Not to worry, JCH, they will NEVER drill for oil in Puget Sound! or in Washington/Oregon coastal waters. Why? Because the Pacific Northwest has NO oil or gas. The geological conditions necessary to create petroleum deposits never existed here. The major oil companies drilled test cores in the 60s and 70s, then packed up and went home. The cores showed the only oil in this region is what’s in crankcases, and the only gas around here is methane from old landfills, burping cows, and local Republicans.

Everybody talks about gasoline and heating fuel, but what about the rest of the stuff that comes from oil? What do you think would happen, for example, to agricultural yields without petro-chemicals? I think we’d be looking at some world-wide starvation in short order.

Its about refineries, not exploration and drilling. Take a look at Pinole, CA if you want a look at what the Hulk wants to do to Washington.

Oil tankers make about 600 passings annually through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound to refineries in Bellingham, Anacortes, and Tacoma. Ted Stevens proposes to turn the Cherry Point refinery northwest of Bellingham into an international oil superport. Stevens would thus would decree Puget Sound as the center of West Coast oil production, along with great environmental and economic risks. The delicate ecosystem of Puget Sound would be threatened with extinction by the resultant increased risk of catastrophic oil spills.

But what does he care. The oil and gas industry ranks first on his donors list, bribing him with $370,000.

“donnageddon” @ 21 – I’m all for coming up with a substitute for oil that would guarantee energy independence and provide the materials for other non-direct uses of pertroleum, such as fertilizers. The problem is that we are not working on it.

“donnageddon” @ 21 – I’m all for coming up with a substitute for oil that would guarantee energy independence and provide the materials for other non-direct uses of pertroleum, such as fertilizers. The problem is that we are not working on it.

Comment by Libertarian— 1/18/06 @ 1:08 pm

Yeah. Sure. But if you are a real libertarian, then you believe the market’s invisible hand (if left unhindered) will take us there.

Well, cryin’, maybe there’s somebody out there is working on it. I don’t know for sure. It would seem to be a great economic opprotunity for somebody if he or she could solve the problem of our enregy dependence.

I’m not all anti-government, BTW. After all, NASA gave us Tang and teflon, and we got some neat pictures of earth from outer space fromthe space program.

Just remember Ted Stevens’ promise as he left the Senate floor:“I’m going to go to every one of your states, and I’m going to tell them what you’ve done … I’m sure that the senator from Washington will enjoy my visits to Washington. Not only are we going to Washington, we’re going to New Hampshire, we’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we’re going to California and Texas and New York…And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Michigan. And then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the Senate! YEEAARGH!!!“

It’s too bad that no one hear understands supply and demand, and basic economic theory. Must be a problem with Seattle schools, which I’m betting most of you went to.

Nothing like a bunch of city dwellers to deny needing the basics of city life, like oil. Why not move to ANWR and live off the land? Then at least you won’t be a big hypocrit when you decide that we don’t need any more exploration.

Libertarian – you need a new name. Your views are about as far from libertarian as you can get. Are you trying to be satirical?

The last time I put Janet S. on the spot I asked her to explain the impact on the US economy if oil were to be sold in Euros instead of Dollars considering the huge trade gap between the US and China.

It took a LOOOOONG time for her to google the answer then she pasted this lame-ass diatribe analysis about how there’s really no trade gap because when you go the grocery store you give money for goods and therefore get an even exchange of goods vs. currency.

What a dumbass!! With people like her voting no wonder the Culture of Corruption could flourish. You can only con the gullible, I guess.

Libertarian – I was commenting on the fact that you use a name that has no relationship to your views. Do you use it because you are part of that lame party, or do you think your views are consistent with libertarian philosphy? I suspect you don’t know the difference.

Wow, GBS – you must either be hallucinating, or you are mistaking me for someone else. I have no recollection of the exchange you refer to. Maybe someone was masquerading as me. Or maybe conversations with you are just very forgettable.

The question about laizes-faire capitalism and regulated capitalism is a little obtuse. My point was that alternative fuels will be developed when the price of oil gets high enough to make it worth the investment. That’s why there were suddenly lots of stories now about bio-diesel when the price of oil went up. The stuff makes no sense when oil is below $70 a barrel.

A judge today sentenced two people to 9-year and 12-year prison terms for scheming to rob a large company.

No, I’m not talking about Enron execs Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow. Skilling has yet to come to trial, and Fastow got only 1 year in jail for his role in stealing billions from consumers and investors.

I’m talking about something really SERIOUS. Anna Ayala, 40, and her husband, Jaime Plascencia, 44, plotted to bilk Wendy’s and its insurance carrier of, say, the price of a new car by planting a co-worker’s severed finger in a bowl of chili. She got 9 years, he got 12 — and they didn’t get a dime from Wendy’s, so unlike the Enron guys, they have no Swiss bank account waiting for them when they get out.

Here’s how our criminal justice system works. To get big time, you have to steal small, and be a poor nobody.

“‘Greed and avarice overtook this couple,’ said Superior Court Judge Edward Davila, adding that the pair had ‘lost their moral compass.'”

Yeah, and they have no common sense, either. If they did, they would have done a leveraged buyout of a major corporation, looted it, set up dummy offshore corporations to siphon cash and hide expenses, made phony reports to the SEC, lied to their shareholders, and manipulated markets to fleece consumers. That way, they could have kept their prison gig to 12 months — and had a Swiss bank account waiting for them when they walked out of the gate on Jan. 19, 2007.

Speaking of losing one’s “moral compass,” I wonder how this judge feels about jailing people without charges, trial, or access to a lawyer; invading foreign countries on false pretexts and torturing their innocent civilians; letting disaster victims starve and go without drinking water or sanitation; extorting millions from Indian tribes and using it to bribe congressmen and other public officials; conducting illegal surveillance of phone calls and electronic communications without a warrant; and lying about everything under the sun, including where humans came from (evoluation vs. “intelligent design”)?

Man, would I like to drag some Republicans into his court and see how much time THEY get!! If Judge Davila hands out proportionate sentences to the GOP crooks and liars, they’ll still be serving time after all the stars burn out and the universe turns into a cold dark cinder.

So, Elliot Bundy is going to handle McGavick’s scampaign. when Goldy posted that Chris Vance was going to work for the Gallatin Group, I just assumed that Chris Vance would be handling McGavick’s scampaign from that office.

But then, since Chris apparently isn’t going to run for Cantwell’s seat himself (now that McGavick is giong to), maybe Chris will be handling Rossi’s next scampaign from that office instead.

“Sleazy political tactics are no way to uncover errors in the governor’s race. Yet, the Building Industry Association of Washington took the low road and conducted a phony survey in an attempt to trick people into providing their signatures.

“The building-industry group, which backs Republican Dino Rossi, sent out a survey to more than 400 people in King County who signed affidavits in support of absentee and provisional ballots in the governor’s election. Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the conservative business group, suspects Democrat volunteers forged signatures that helped put Gov. Christine Gregoire over the top. … McCabe even offered a $10 check to encourage people to return the survey.

” … McCabe is so upset with the election he feels he, with the aid of a forgery expert, should find mismatched signatures and turn them over to federal and local authorities. …

The really interesting thing about this is that we haven’t heard any more about it. No Democratic ballots were thrown out in Rossi’s election contest lawsuit. No Democratic volunteers have been charged with forgery or perjury. It turns out the DEMOCRATS DIDN’T CHEAT. One can only surmise that perjury and forgery comes so naturally to Republicans — just ask Lori Sotelo — that they assume everyone else does it, too.

Item brings to mind wonderful scene from Broadcast News in which Albert Brooks is on the phone feeding information and questions, which are repeated line by line on the air by airhead anchorman. In the case of HorsesAss.org, local Democratic consultant Christian Sinderman can borrow Brooks’ line: “I say it here, it comes out there.” jc

My point was that alternative fuels will be developed when the price of oil gets high enough to make it worth the investment.

posted by Janet “I am not really a libertarian (snicker)” S.

That sounds reasonable. So, Janet-expert-in-neoliberal-economic-thought, what is the unrestrained free market response to an assumed inability of alternative fuels to take the place of petroleum in a modern industrial economy?

Katrina has a bit to do with this winter’s spike, but lest anyone think gas prices will fall back, let me warn you right now the bulk of this increase is structural and permanent. Here’s why the supply and demand situation has become unfavorable to consumers.

1. U.S. production is declining while consumption rises. 2. Canada is consuming more and exporting less of its output. 3. Many power plants have switched to natural gas because it pollutes less than coal or oil. 4. Natural gas is not easily imported from overseas because it must be liquefied and compressed before it can be transported by ships. 5. Ya know all those houses that have been built during the construction boom of the last 5 years? And all the McMansions people are building, and all the remodeling that adds space to existing dwellings? That’s more space to heat, and it has to be heated for the next 100 years.

High natural gas prices are rippling through the entire economy, because gas is used for more than heating. It’s a feedstock for chemicals, plastics, and farm fertilizers. Just yesterday, the CEO of PPG Industries said he’s thinking of closing a fiberglass insulation plant in North Carolina and moving that production overseas where gas is much cheaper. The U.S. chemical industry has already lost 100,000 jobs, with more to come. And high fertilizer prices are squeezing farmers and pushing up prices on grocery shelves — in case you haven’t noticed (how could you not?), food prices have moved up significantly. It’s inevitable this will turn into cost-push inflation and labor unrest as workers demand, and if necessary strike for, higher wages to keep up with the escalating cost of living. Combine structural inflation with the monetary inflation being created by Bush’s deficit spending policies that are flooding world markets with cheap paper dollars, and you have the recipe for the same kind of crushing stagflation that afflicted our country in the aftermath of Vietnam — explosive inflation combined with a stalled economy. A great big gooey turd is headed straight for the whirling fan.

Roger @ 56: “…workers demand, and if necessary strike for, higher wages to keep up with the escalating cost of living… A great big gooey turd is headed straight for the whirling fan.”

And the union bosses will be riding it a la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.

While I will not endorse the fiscal policies of the current administration, union bosses need to pull their heads out of their selfish, screw-the-workers-‘cuz-I-get-paid-even-if-they-strike asses.

What is the biggest cause of prices going up? Labor-related costs. When you buy a GM car, you’re paying more for worker healthcare than steel. Despite all of the rain Seattle has had recently, your water bill is NOT going down. Why? Increasing labor costs.

Solutions? Right-to-work laws. The UN has already declared that closed shops are a violation of human rights. You pro-union Lefties are all for the UN and human rights, right??

We need to eliminate employee “tenure.” If you can quit, you can be fired. If you want a contract, it should be structured just like the ones for the executives you envy — no-compete clauses and penalties if you walk out.

We also need to outlaw double-dipping (working for a big salary while still receiving a pension) by government employees. BUT, we also need to change the laws so that Social Security recipients can still work and receive benefits as long as the total doesn’t exceed… $50,000? (I’m flexible on that number)

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